XIV

To Mrs. Philip C. Kaujfmann

Rochester, Minnesota, January 1,1921

To that little Fairy with whom a young fellow named
Frank Lane used to wander in the woods, hunting the
homes of the Fairies,—­ Greetings on her
birthday! Has she found where they live?
I believe she has. They live where eyes are bright
with love, and hands are gentle and kind, where feelings
are not hurt and there is song hummed, and Play, a
very real God, still lives,

... I think that we have got to see each other
some how, somewhere, because life is passing awfully
fast and there is one best thing in it—­supremely,
overwhelmingly best—­and that is affection.
I’ve chased around after fame and work for others,
but I just wish I had spent pretty much all my time
loving you and Mother and Ned, and let everything
else come way down on the list. The people who
really love us are so few, aren’t they?
Lots of them like us, lots of them are glad to be
with us, but few can be counted on “world without
end, Amen.”

... This is surely a very uncertain and unsatisfactory
world for me right now. How much we all do like
definiteness and how few are willing to trust the
future to the Great Spirit. We fuss and fume
as if it would do good rather than ill. Happiness
is the thing we all desire and it is to be had easily
through a most simple philosophy; do your best and
then have faith that things will come right.
Happy people are those who live with happy thoughts;
those who see good in people and by brave and cheerful
thinking are superior to depression and bitterness.

The longer I live the more I am convinced that it
is our duty to be gay; not reckless, never that; not
boisterous, but light-hearted. It saves doctor’s
bills, brings success, and is the one method, the
natural method, by which we become really big, and
by that I mean superior to the evil forces that try
to break us down. ... To be gay one must see
how very little some things are, and how very big
other things are. And the big things are things
like love and goodness and unselfishness; and the
little things are the selfish mean things, self-indulgent
things, things generally that come out of one’s
vanity, one’s love of one’s self.
Get rid of that and life becomes a pretty good place.
Envy, vanity, self-indulgence—­these are
devils.